Mayor: Olympics meetings getting ‘hijacked’

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/07/mayor_olympics_meetings_getting_hijacked



JUST SAY NO: Chris Hoeh of Jamaica Plain speaks in opposition to the Boston 2024 Olympics bid during a community meeting at Marina Bay in Quincy.

Mayor: Olympics meetings getting ‘hijacked’
Friday, July 10, 2015
Jack Encarnacao

Mayor Martin J. Walsh is ripping opponents of the Hub’s controversial Olympics bid for crashing neighborhood meetings and driving away workaday residents who just want to ask questions and get answers about the proposal to host the 2024 Summer Games.

“I think what’s happened with the community meetings is they’ve been hijacked,” Walsh told the Herald yesterday. “I think people are getting frustrated with the community meetings when ... the same five people take over every meeting. Really the intent of those meetings is to have a conversation.”

~snip~

Walsh pointed to people linked to the group No Boston 2024 — which backed the recent 4:30 a.m. Olympics protest by the group Black Lives Matter outside the mayor’s Dorchester home — as some of the instigators.

No Boston 2024 spokesman Jonathan Cohn defended the group, saying, “What happened at the JP meeting is that the city or Boston 2024 or both wanted to structure it so they could control the terms of the debate. Basically so they could pigeonhole people into specific questions. ... And the people in Jamaica Plain — as
people in Jamaica Plain often 
do — rebelled at that.”